Q539. Minor children renouncing

British citizenship for Indian

citizenship

Question: Sir I will be obliged if you could answer the following query. My family of four, including 2 kids are british citizens with OCI, we were previously Indian citizens. If we return to India, I might have to take indian citizenship for my kids, since the educational opportunities are limited by OCI status (the assurances of equality given by MOIA are practically not true in my instances, including medical and engineering admissions who want Indian nationals in many instances). The difficulty is, the british law does not allow children to be able to give up nationality till 18, while Indian law does not permit dual citizenship and therefore a child with british citizenship and passport possibly cannot become an Indian national before 18. Can you confirm this or suggest a way, whereby a child currently holding british passport can become an Indian citizen. Any drastic ways i.e. if the parents also acquire Indian passport? thanking you in anticipation Avinash Answer: You are correct in saying that British law does not allow children below age 18 to give up their citizenship. The only exception under British renunciation laws is that they seem to allow children under 18 to renounce citizenship if they have been married! in such a case they regard under age 18 children to have met the age requirement of renunciation. India is the only country I am aware of, where minor children lose their Indian citizenship if parent renounces Indian citizenship. (Section8 of the Citizenship Act 1955) There are many things you should take into account when thinking of renouncing British citizenship. • Even with Indian citizenship, getting admissions in professional colleges in India is not guaranteed. • Losing British citizenship would definitely take away the right of your children to lower fee structure for residents if they decide to pursue studies at some point of time in UK. • Depending on how long you have been away from India or whether your children were born in India or not, keep in mind that after a long period of being away from India, some adjustment is required and not everyone can cope with the culture shock. Sometimes staying in India for a trial period is perhaps an option to consider, before giving up British citizenship.